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I am Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and Programme Convenor at the University of Wollongong.I read for a BA in philosophy at the University of Ulster, an MSc in Cognitive Science at the University of Birmingham and then a PhD in philosophy at King's College London. I have taught philosophy at the University of Kent, Birkbeck College Faculty of Continuing Education and as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire. My Research interests include: Philosophy of Mind – especially narrative approaches to the self; Philosophy of Cognitive Science – especially embodied and extended cognition; Pragmatism - especially C.S. Peirce; Wittgenstein; Aesthetics; Virtue theory as it applies to both ethical and cognitive aspects of the individual.

9 items found. Sort by: publication yearfirst authorviewingsaddition date Richard Menary (ed.) (forthcoming). The Extended Mind. MIT Press. Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? In their famous 1998 paper "The Extended Mind," philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers posed this question and answered it provocatively: cognitive processes "ain't all in the head." The environment has an active role in driving cognition; cognition is sometimes made up of neural, bodily, and environmental processes. Their argument excited a vigorous debate among philosophers, both supporters and detractors. This volume brings together for the first time the (...) best responses to Clark and Chalmers's bold proposal. These responses, together with the original paper by Clark and Chalmers, offer a valuable overview of the latest research on the extended mind thesis. The contributors first discuss (and answer) objections raised to Clark and Chalmers's thesis. Andy Clark himself responds to critics in an essay that uses the movie Memento's amnesia-aiding notes and tattoos to illustrate the workings of the extended mind. Contributors then consider the different directions in which the extended mind project might be taken, including the need for an approach that focuses on cognitive activity and practice. (shrink) The Extended Mind in Philosophy of Mind To read   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     File under..  |   Export | Scholar | More.. Richard Menary (2009). Intentionality, Cognitive Integration and the Continuity Thesis. Topoi 28 (1):31-43. Naturalistic philosophers ought to think that the mind is continuous with the rest of the world and should not, therefore, be surprised by the findings of the extended mind, cognitive integration and enactivism. Not everyone is convinced that all mental phenomena are continuous with the rest of the world. For example, intentionality is often formulated in a way that makes the mind discontinuous with the rest of the world. This is a consequence of Brentano’s formulation of intentionality, I suggest, and (...) can be overcome by revealing that the concept of intentional directedness as he receives it from the Scholastics is quite consistent with the continuity thesis. It is only when intentional directedness is conjoined with intentional inexistence that intentionality and content are consistent with a discontinuity thesis (such as Brentano’s thesis). This makes room to develop an account of intentional directedness that is consistent with the continuity thesis in the form of Peirce’s representational principle. I also argue against a form of the discontinuity thesis in the guise of the derived/underived content distinction. Having shown that intentionality is consistent with the continuity thesis I argue that we should focus on intentionality and representation as bodily enacted. I conclude that we would be better off focussing on representation and intentionality in action rather than giving abstract functional accounts of extended cognition. (shrink) The Extended Mind in Philosophy of Mind To read   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     File under..  |   Export | Scholar | More.. Richard Menary (2009). Intentionality and Consciousness. In William Banks (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Consciousness. Elsevier. Intentionality is usually defined as the directedness of the mind toward something other than itself. My desire for a cold beer is directed at the cold beer in front of me. Much of consciousness is intentional, my conscious experiences are usually directed at something. However, conscious experiences typically have a phenomenal character: there is something it is like for me to see the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean and to feel the warm water lapping over my feet, and to (...) smell the briny breeze. An important question to answer concerning the relationship between intentionality and consciousness is whether all conscious states are intentional? Another question concerns the explanatory priority of intentionality and phenomenal character: Can phenomenal character be explained in terms of intentionality? Or is it the case that intentionality should be understood in terms of phenomenology? Philosophers from the analytic, phenomenological, and naturalistic traditions have all made important contributions to our understanding of intentionality and consciousness. Some philosophers, such as Dretske, think that our phenomenology is intentionally structured. Others, such as Horgan and Tienson think that intentionality is fundamentally determined by our phenomenology. This looks like an impasse; however it may well be resolved by a combination of contemporary accounts of representation combined with an embodied phenomenology. (shrink) Phenomenal Intentionality in Philosophy of Mind Intentionality, Misc in Philosophy of Mind To read   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     File under..  |   Export | Scholar | More.. Richard Menary (2008). Embodied Narratives. Journal of Consciousness Studies 15 (6):63-84. Is the self narratively constructed? There are many who would answer yes to the question. Dennett (1991) is, perhaps, the most famous proponent of the view that the self is narratively constructed, but there are others, such as Velleman (2006), who have followed his lead and developed the view much further. Indeed, the importance of narrative to understanding the mind and the self is currently being lavished with attention across the cognitive sciences (Dautenhahn, 2001; Hutto, 2007; Nelson, 2003). Emerging from (...) this work, there appear to be a variety of ways in which we can think of the narrative construction of the self and the relationship between the narrative self and the embodied agent. I wish to examine two such ways in this paper. The first I shall call the abstract narrative account, this is because its proponents take the narrative self to be an abstraction (Dennett, 1991; Velleman, 2006). Dennett, for example, refers to the self as a centre of narrative gravity, to be thought of as analogous to a mathematical conception of the centre of gravity of an object. The second I shall call the embodied narrative account and this is the view that the self is constituted both by an embodied consciousness whose experiences are available for narration and narratives themselves, which can play a variety of roles in the agent’s psychological life. (shrink) The Self in Metaphysics To read   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     File under..  |   Export | Scholar | More.. Richard Menary (2007). Writing As Thinking. Language Sciences 29:621-632. In this paper I aim to show that the creation and manipulation of written vehicles is part of our cognitive processing and, therefore, that writing transforms our cognitive abilities. I do this from the perspective of cognitive integration: completing a complex cognitive, or mental, task is enabled by a co-ordinated interaction between neural processes, bodily processes and manipulating written sentences. In section one I introduce Harris’ criticisms of ways in which writing has been said to restructure thought (Goody 1968; McLuhan (...) 1962, 1964; Ong 1982). This will give us a preliminary idea about possible pitfalls for a cognitive integrationist account. The second section outlines, firstly, how integrated cognitive systems function. Secondly, the model is applied to a hybrid mental act where writing allows us to complete complex cognitive tasks. The final section outlines the sense in which, following Harris, there is “a more realistic picture of how writing restructures thought” [Harris, R., 1989. How does writing restructure thought? Language and Communication 9 (2/3) 99–106] that is concealed by the ‘romantic fantasies’ of theorists such as the above. This picture is one of writing providing an autoglottic space in which a new form of theoretical thinking becomes prevalent. The cognitive integrationist understands this in terms of the nature of the written vehicles and how we manipulate them. (shrink) The Extended Mind in Philosophy of Mind To read   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     File under..  |   Export | Scholar | More.. Richard Menary (2007). Cognitive Integration: Mind and Cognition Unbounded. Palgrave Macmillan. In Cognitive Integration: Attacking The Bounds of Cognition Richard Menary argues that the real pay-off from extended-mind-style arguments is not a new form of externalism in the philosophy of mind, but a view in which the 'internal' and 'external' aspects of cognition are integrated into a whole. Menary argues that the manipulation of external vehicles constitutes cognitive processes and that cognition is hybrid: internal and external processes and vehicles complement one another in the completion of cognitive tasks. However, we cannot (...) make good on these claims without understanding the cognitive norms by which we manipulate bodily external vehicles of cognition. Shaun Gallagher: “Menary sets out some extremely welcome clarifications that help to integrate the models of embodied and extended cognition. He not only provides convincing responses to all of the main objections that have been made against these approaches, he also puts flesh on the integrated model by incorporating concepts such as epistemic action, by expanding the discussion to include a Peircean view of representation, by demonstrating its evolutionary roots, and by exploring its implications for language and cognition. This is one of those books that takes us forward a number of giant steps. Menary makes it comprehensive and comprehensible.” . (shrink) The Extended Mind in Philosophy of Mind Embodiment and Situated Cognition in Philosophy of Cognitive Science To read   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     File under..  |   Export | Scholar | More.. Richard Menary (2006). Attacking the Bounds of Cognition. Philosophical Psychology 19 (3):329-344. Recently internalists have mounted a counter-attack on the attempt to redefine the bounds of cognition. The counter-attack is aimed at a radical project which I call "cognitive integration," which is the view that internal and external vehicles and processes are integrated into a whole. Cognitive integration can be defended against the internalist counter arguments of Adams and Aizawa (A&A) and Rupert. The disagreement between internalists and integrationists is whether the manipulation of external vehicles constitutes a cognitive process. Integrationists think that (...) they do, typically for reasons to do with the close coordination and causal interplay between internal and external processes. The internalist criticisms of the manipulation thesis fail because they misconstrue the nature of manipulation, ignore the hybrid nature of cognition, and take the manipulation thesis to be dependent upon a weak parity principle. (shrink) The Extended Mind in Philosophy of Mind To read   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     File under..  |   Export  | Other links: taylorandfrancis.metapress.com informaworld.com ingentaconnect.com   | Scholar | More.. Richard Menary (2006). Radical Enactivism: Intentionality, Phenomenology, and Narrative. John Benjamins. “ is collection is a much-needed remedy to the confusion about which varieties of enactivism are robust yet viable rejections of traditional representationalism approaches to cognitivism – and which are not. Hutto’s paper is the pivot around which the expert commentators, enactivists and non-enactivists alike, sketch out the implications of enactivism for a wide variety of issues: perception, emotion, the theory of content, cognition, development, social interaction, and more. e inclusion of thoughtful replies from Hutto gives the volume a further (...) degree of depth and integration o en lacking in collections of essays. Anyone interested in assessing the current cutting-edge developments in the. (shrink) Embodiment and Situated Cognition in Philosophy of Cognitive Science To read   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     File under..  |   Export | Scholar | More.. Richard Menary (2006). Radical Enactivism: Intentionality, Phenomenology and Narrative: Focus on the Philosophy of Daniel D. Hutto. Amsterdam: J Benjamins. This collection is a much-needed remedy to the confusion about which varieties of enactivism are robust yet viable rejections of traditional representionalism... Embodiment and Situated Cognition in Philosophy of Cognitive Science To read   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     File under..  |   Export | Scholar | More..

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